openmesh/Doc/tutorial_01.docu

/** \page tutorial_01 First Steps - Building a cude

This small example shows:
\li How to declare your type \c MyMesh,
\li How to add vertices and faces to a mesh,
\li How to write a mesh using the IO functions.

For each program the first step is to define your type \c
MyMesh. %OpenMesh supports general polygonal meshes (faces are polygons
with varying number of vertices) as well as specialized triangle
meshes (all faces are triangles). In this example we want to build a
cube from six quadrangles, therefore we choose the polygonal mesh.

%OpenMesh also supports different mesh kernels, specifying how all the
vertices, edges, and faces are stored internally (see also \ref
mesh_kernels_group). However, the storage must provide an array like interface.
For the tutorial we use the supplied ArrayKernel. The predefined
combinations of TriMesh/PolyMesh and the kernel are
contained in \c %OpenMesh/Core/Mesh/Types/, we use the
<tt>PolyMesh_ArrayKernelT</tt>. 

\dontinclude build_cube.cc
\skipline PolyMesh_ArrayKernel
\skipline MyMesh

Now since we have declared our type \c MyMesh, we only have to add 8
vertices and 6 quadrangles to build a cube. Adding a vertex is done
using the <tt>add_vertex</tt> method. It gets a coordinate and returns
a handle to the inserted vertex. We store all handles in an array,
since we need them for specifying the faces.

\skipline vhandle[0]
\until vhandle[3]

<br>In order to add a face to the mesh, we have to build a vector holding
the handles to the face's vertices. This vector is passed to the
\c add_face method. The following block will create a face from the first
four vertices:

\skipline face_vhandles
\until add_face

<br>The orientation of the face is defined by the order in which the
vertices are given: If you look at the frontfacing side of the
polygon, then the vertices are in counter-clockwise order.

After creating all of the six faces, we want to write the resulting
mesh to standard output. %OpenMesh provides some basic input/output 
methods in the namespace OpenMesh::IO:

\skipline write_

<br>To use the IO facility of %OpenMesh make sure that the include MeshIO.hh is
included first.

\dontinclude build_cube.cc
\skipline MeshIO
\until PolyMesh_ArrayKernel

<br>The complete source looks like this:

\include build_cube.cc

**/